


Loyalty

by ellorgast



Series: Monster Socks! [6]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Angst, Gen, Silver Millennium Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:54:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mamoru remembers a moment of betrayal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loyalty

He vaulted up out of his chair, and it was like there was an ocean waiting for him at the top of the room. His head broke through the water that must have been suspended just above it a moment before, and suddenly everything was swimming, everything was heavy and pressing in on him. The high gilded ceilings, the glimmering candles, the crystal goblets, all seemed to dance around him as he stumbled backwards over the toppled chair, pulling himself up from the marble floor with unresponsive limbs. 

He stared at them, at his men, his brothers. Their faces were growing more difficult to focus on, but he could see that not one of them was surprised, not one would come to his aid. They stood around the table, calmly, all too calmly. They were all part of this. “What have you done to me?” He could hear the unfamiliar slur in his voice as his mouth struggled to form the words.

He tried, frantically, to think of when they’d done it. It was Jadeite who first passed him his goblet, but Zoisite had filled it the second time. Nephrite who spoke to him the longest, could have been holding his attention while someone else slipped him the poison. It could not have been an accident that they chose a night that Kunzite was out on patrol. 

They were advancing on him, and he lurched backwards until he found the wall, something to brace himself against. The floor threatened constantly to swell up toward him, but the wall, if he did not try to look at it, held steady.

“It will be easier if you do not fight it,” Zoisite informed him, always quick to try and sound like the reasonable one in the room.

Maybe it was all an elaborate, tasteless joke, he thought. No different from when Jadeite and Zoisite had lit fire crackers outside his tent on a hunting trip. But there was no mischief in Zoisite’s eyes now, and Jadeite’s telltale smirk was nowhere to be seen.

“How long... have you known?” Endymion forced the words out, forced himself to glare at them though their forms grew blurred. “Known you would betray me?” Only moments ago, they had been dining together. They had been laughing.

“This is no betrayal!” Nephrite shouted, and Endymion allowed himself a moment’s hope that he would be heard. But no servants would be allowed near their private wing at this time of night. The servants were well aware of the habits of the Prince and his men, that they often lingered long into the night over bottles of wine and decks of cards, and had no desire of being disrupted or having their more embarrassing antics sighted by a mere servant. His men knew this, that they would be undisturbed until morning. Just as they must surely know that he would not go quietly.

He drew in deep gulps of air, hoping to abate the growing dizziness. “Isn’t it?”

Jadeite closed in first. “No. This is a rescue.”

Endymion’s dagger was out in a flash, and Jadeite leaped back with blood soaking into his sleeve. The prince held the weapon in trembling fingers. He had his sword, but it would be too heavy. He knew very well that he was no match for three able warriors--had trained with them daily, knew the full extent of their ability nearly as well as his own--but maybe, if he left evidence of a struggle... if Kunzite was still loyal...

They were too quick for him. A hand closed around his wrist just as a sword pommel smashed against the side of his head. The marble floor rose up to meet him once again, and this time he could find no strength to pull himself from its cool surface, his head drumming with pain. The dagger was plucked easily from his hand. They took his sword, as well, and, because they knew him and his every habit, they took the knife he hid in his boot. 

He was hauled to his feet, gently but efficiently. He could already predict what came next. If they wanted him sedated, not dead, they intended to capture him. They would teleport him out of the palace, undetected by servants and any who did not possess the power to sense it. The trip would disorient him. He would have no idea of his location when they landed. The perfect means to abduct a prince, possible only for his most trusted guardians.

Zoisite took the weapons and laid them on the table, beside the remains of the meal they had never finished. Of course, somebody would have to stay behind to clean up. To fabricate whatever lie they needed to avoid suspicion. 

The others held him by either arm, and all he could do was close his eyes. This might well be the last time he ever stood in his home, and this was not how he wished to remember it. 

When they landed, it was only the strong grip of his two captors that prevented him from collapsing where he stood. He clenched his teeth and swallowed back the sting of bile in his throat--if he was going to be sick, he would rather it be on the shoes of whoever had seduced his Shitennou away from him.

Their new location felt as though it was filled with cold, slimy fingers that seemed to slip beneath his skin and set him shivering. A cave, perhaps, or the dungeon of some hidden stronghold. Despite the blood drumming through his head, he could faintly make out the sound of heavy footsteps close by. A fourth person, moving to stand just in front of Endymion. He blinked his eyes open, and though they stubbornly refused to focus, he needed no clarity to recognize the ornately-etched greaves that guarded the shins of every Golden Kingdom soldier. 

“Well?” A voice curtly demanded, and Endymion’s chest constricted when he heard it. There would be no hope of rescue now. Everything he once thought he had was truly lost.

“It went about as well as could be expected. He didn’t make too much of a mess.” The cold tone in Nephrite’s voice did not suit him at all.

A hand cupped his chin and lifted it. Reluctantly, he looked up into the eyes of his captor. Eyes that were often likened to tempered steel, but that he had always considered to be like storm clouds--shifting between the light misty grey associated with soft rain and the dark fury of a tempest. There was no dark anger in Kunzite’s eyes, now, and Endymion could not decide whether that somehow made it worse.

He flinched as fingers lightly prodded the wound on his head, but the hand under his chin would not allow him to pull away. It was so laughably familiar, the way that Kunzite always seemed to be close at hand when he found himself injured, usually with a lecture. Kunzite on the training grounds, telling Endymion that he should learn to block better if he does not want to wind up on the ground with scraped hands. Kunzite’s hand on his arm, talking him through the pain when he’d shattered an ankle in the woods, and had to heal it himself or wait the hours it would take for help to come.

Now his guardian looked between the two who held him. “Which of you did this?”

After a heavy moment’s pause, Jadeite offered, “He went for his dagger. We needed to act fast--”

In a single movement, Kunzite’s hand released Endymion and swung across the blond’s face. He stumbled back, lip bleeding where Kunzite’s ring had struck it. In all his life, Endymion had never seen the commander of the Shitennou strike a servant in anger. He would never so much as snap a stubborn horse’s reins too hard. Every one of of them had dared to challenge their leader’s authority at least once before--Endymion suspected that he and Nephrite had come to blows on a few occasions--but not one of them could rouse Kunzite’s wrath enough to provoke such a violent reaction. 

Kunzite’s voice was as cold as the dead of winter. “He is your liege. You do not strike him.”

Endymion hoped he had left the ocean behind in his dining hall, along with his weapons and any sense of security, but now he felt it descend over him again. More than the cold dungeon, than Nephrite’s strong grip on his arm, or his aching head, Jadeite’s split lip seemed to show, definitively, that these were not the men he once thought of as brothers. 

The murky room lurched to one side as he felt the roaring in his ears. The sea swallowed him up in its dark maw.

***

His cell was not uncomfortable, for a prison. His bed was not the wide four-poster that he was used to, but it was adequate, with ample bedding. They saw to his needs. They took turns bringing him his meals, though he wanted neither their food nor their company. If they were smart--and Endymion knew that they were very, very smart--they would want to keep him too weak to concentrate his powers properly. They would continue giving him the drug with which they had first ensnared him, perhaps in smaller doses. He would rather endure the pain of hunger than allow them to steal his senses again.

The sound of heavy footsteps and the rattle of his cage door told him that Nephrite had come with his evening meal. He could see no sunlight down here, but he counted the days by the trays of poisoned food set by his bed. This was the third of today’s trays, on the third day, and despite his resolve, the smell of braised meat made his entire body ache with need for sustenance. 

Instead of simply setting the tray down, Nephrite stepped close, holding it where he could see it, enticing him. Endymion turned away in disgust, pulling further into the wall he leaned against. 

“Still not going to do anything about that cut on your head?” Nephrite asked lightly, as though he were still something to Endymion other than his jailer.

The wound where Jadeite struck him was slow to heal, because he was not helping it along. “I would rather keep it,” the prince informed the stone wall across from him. “To remind me that this is real.”

The brunette laughed--a low chuckle, not the roaring guffaw he was once capable of. “And what part of this does not appear real to you? Is it the spiders? It’s the spiders, isn’t it?”

Endymion gave him a slow look. “You have drugged and imprisoned me, your liege, and you have no problem with this.”

“Because everything we do is in your best interest, whether you know it or not.” Nephrite tore off a piece of meat and shoved it into his mouth. In the past, the sight of the tall warrior swiping somebody else’s food would have been perfectly normal, but now Endymion suspected it to be a deliberate attempt to convince him to eat it too. “It’s no different from when you were young and getting grounded for wandering off on your own. We do things for your protection, even when you believe we are just being bullies.

“You really believe that. That what you’re doing right now is for my protection.”

“Of course.”

“From what?”

“From the witch who holds you under her power.”

“She is no witch!” The prince snarled.

Nephrite plucked a vegetable from the plate, unmoved by the outburst. “And yet here you are, defending her name against all reason. We have watched her seduce you, seen how you have been changed by her. Everything that ever mattered to you in the past has been overshadowed by her, your loyalty to your people and this kingdom trickling away.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“A year ago, you would have been horrified to see what you have become.”

“And what is that?”

“A puppet of the Moon Kingdom.”

“And I suppose that nothing I can say will convince you that my mind is still my own.”

“Your mind has been charmed by foreign magic. That is the nature of charms: the victim remains oblivious to his plight.”

For the first time since his capture, Endymion felt his anger become overwhelmed by bitter sadness. The Nephrite who spoke to him was so much like the man that he remembered, but somewhere beneath that familiar smile, somewhere on the edges of his eyes, was something strange and terrible. “You never answered my question,” he said softly.

“Which one was that?” 

“How long? How long ago did Beryl come to you, and... bring this to your attention?”

The brunette gave him a look of confusion. “It was Kunzite who suspected it first, actually.”

“So she got to him first,” Endymion muttered, “so that he could get the rest of you. Of course.”

The man he once called his guardian continued to stare at Endymion as though he was speaking gibberish. “It was we who appealed to Beryl for help. She is a good ally, a champion of our kingdom.”

“Yes, I am sure all of you felt like she was doing you a great service.”

“She has great power. When she arrives back from her business in the north, she will unravel the spell over you.”

“That is what this is? I am here to wait for her to do to me what she did to you?”

“What--”

“I can see the places in your heart where she has tainted you. Small places, important places. Deeply embedded beneath your every thought and action. And all of it pointing to your loyalty to me. I always thought that for a sorceress like that to control a person, they would have to change everything they are, but now I see that all she must do is know your deepest weakness. And I’m sorry, Nephrite, I really am. I’m sorry I did not see what she did to you sooner. I’m sorry that your weakness was me. And I’m sorry for what I must do.”

Nephrite did not move, but Endymion could see him adjust his stance, could see his fingers stray close to his sword. “What do you mean?”

“If I live only one more day, I promise you that it will be spent finding the means to free you.” The prince did not move, either, but he felt the Golden Crystal in his chest begin to flare with power. “For now, I wish you goodbye, brother.”

As the cell exploded into golden light around him, Nephrite reached for him, his eyes wide in alarm, before vanishing along with everything else.

***

Memories were a strange thing. When he did not have them, when they eluded him at every turn, he longed desperately for them, for the secrets that they held and the link they bore to his past. 

Yet when he had them at last, they were like snakes coiled in his stomach, pushing up his throat to choke him with their cold scales. He wanted to vomit them out. He wanted them gone.

Mamoru did not know what to do with himself. He did not know how to put on his shirt, put his notebooks in his bag, and leave his dorm. Carry on with life. He stared uncomprehendingly at his pile of textbooks, wondering how they had ever been something he considered important. 

He did not notice that hours passed. He did not notice the usual noise in the halls outside his door, of people chatting, shouting, laughing, passing by. He did not notice that there was rain pattering softly on his window. He had woken up to find the world changed, except the world had never really changed at all, and it was carrying on without him. 

Until a faint, insistent noise met his ears. He looked around his dorm room in confusion. That noise was vaguely familiar. It seemed important.

His phone was lit up on his desk. His phone wanted to tell him something. He turned it over in his hands, as if he could not entirely remember its purpose. Then he read the text on the screen. 

“yo dud u plain bb wit us tonite or wat”

If anything could jog Mamoru’s memory as to what era he was now in, it was Jaden’s incomprehensible texts that his poor Japanese brain always struggled to decipher.

He had forgotten all about his plans to get together with them for a basketball game, but now he remembered how he had worked ahead in his studies just to clear his schedule for tonight. He considered for a long time before he responded, “can’t. studying.”

“fuk dat u dont need study u ned bb!!!!”

No, he thought. Not now. Not today.

He started and deleted several texts before he sent only one word.

“sorry”


End file.
